UCLA Film & Television Archive holds a collection of TV and motion picture productions by and about noted film producer and director, Stanley Kramer (1913 - 2001). Mr. Kramer began his career in the 1930s as an editor and writer, later forming an independent production company in the 1940s before moving into studio-based projects.
Kramer was one of a new breed of independent producers who began operating in competition with the established Hollywood studios after World War II. Like their pre-war predecessors, the new independents rarely had the money to pay for expensive literary properties or top-name stars; unlike their predecessors, they did not for that reason concentrate on turning out formula westerns and gangster pictures.
Kramer was in the forefront of those willing to gamble on relatively unknown performers and offbeat, even controversial, subject matter to distinguish his work from those of his wealthier competitors. Home of the Brave (1949), often called the first Hollywood film to examine prejudice against African Americans, is an early example of the kind of social issue film for which Kramer has always been best known as a producer and in his later career as a producer-director.
A notable and celebrated artist, Mr. Kramer received the prestigious, Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1961. In 1998 Mr. Kramer was awarded the first NAACP Vanguard Award "in recognition of the strong social themes that ran through his body of work."
The Archive's collection includes rare interviews and TV appearances with Mr. Kramer, such as "Youth Wants to Know" an NBC Public Affairs production from 1958 which features Kramer speaking on a number of issues, including the blacklist, film as art, and labor problems. The Archive's general collection also includes research viewing copies of some of Mr. Kramer's most celebrated films, such as The Defiant Ones (1958), Inherit the Wind (1960), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) and many more.
UCLA Film & Television Archive has preserved a number of classic feature films produced by Stanley Kramer, including Champion (1949), The Men (1950) and The Wild One (1954). Download an informal list of holdings in the Stanley Kramer Collection as a PDF document. To arrange onsite research viewing of Stanley Kramer titles at UCLA, please contact the Archive Research and Study Center (ARSC).
Also note that UCLA Library Special Collections holds the Stanley Kramer papers. For more information on the paper collection, please contact Library staff directly.
